Maintaining fairness and consistency is the primary CFA Institute concern when making plans for the CFA exam-grading program each year. Every January, CFA Institute sends out invitations to potential graders to determine the number who can participate in the grading program at Charlottesville, Va. Potential graders are discovered through various channels, including the large number of volunteer programs at local CFA societies. Graders must have appropriate levels of grading experience and be familiar with the current CFA curriculum.

Graders are assigned to a grading team that focuses exclusively on a particular question or portion of a question that’s on the exam. Graders eat and breathe their particular question throughout the grading process, ensuring that they all will have intimate knowledge of the question they are grading. Each grading team is composed of one captain, one assistant captain, two senior graders, and a number of regular graders. CFA Institute, as well, tries to ensure that each grading team is reflective of the diversity of the CFA membership.

All graders are given access to the question, solution, and grading key several weeks before the grading period begins. They then provide feedback and opinions to their grading team captain regarding any necessary changes to the grading key and solution. The captain, the assistant captain, and the senior graders finalize the grading key and solution in a special session one day before the beginning of regular grading (the first round of grading, which is followed by regrading and third-round grading). Before finalizing the grading key and solution, the captain, assistant captain, and senior graders grade a number of actual exams as samples to get a taste of possible candidate responses. The feedback and opinions from the regular graders (and those from the captain, assistant captain, and senior graders) are then vigorously debated in that special session until a consensus, or a final decision from the captain, is reached. The updated solution and grading key, which contain all the accepted and rejected responses as agreed upon at that point, are submitted to the co-ordinator (there are two co-ordinators, each responsible for about half of the grading teams) for approval.

On the first day of regular grading, graders also grade a number of actual exams as samples based on the final version of the grading key and solution. Each paper is discussed thoroughly to guide the graders on how to grade consistently and fairly. To maintain a high level of consistency and fairness, graders adhere strictly to the grading key and solution, exercising as little personal judgment as possible.

Despite the vigorousness of the grading process, graders sometimes find themselves with an unanticipated candidate response that isn’t covered by the grading key. In that situation, graders must seek input from the captain, who makes a decision and adds that decision to the grading key.

After every exam has been graded once in the first week of grading, all exams—except those with very high or very low scores—are graded a second time, independently. Second-round grading is done without knowledge of scores awarded in the first round of grading. If a particular exam is awarded a different score in second-round grading, that exam is graded a third time by a very experienced grader to ensure, absolutely, that it was graded fairly and consistently.

At the end of the process, the CFA Institute’s Board of Directors decides on the minimum passing score of the exam. The Board considers a number of factors in determining the appropriate score, including feedback from each grading team regarding the minimum passing score of their particular question.

Three key elements, then, are integral to the CFA exam grading process: first, the selection of a diverse set of experienced graders; second, a robust training regimen that reinforces fairness for the selected graders; third, the feedback and refining of the grading system that helps ensure consistency. It’s this combination of elements in the process that ensures fairness and consistency—both critical features for all those who have taken the exams, and those who will in the future.